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The Journey of a Log — Day 4: Science turns dead pine into valuable lumber

Once labour-intensive work now relies on complex technology to get the job done

Part of a six-day series - Journey of a Log: A story of the forest and the people whose lives it shapes. Forest technicians use a string of instruments to determine the value of a log.

QUESNEL — At West Fraser’s modern Quesnel sawmill, sophisticated computer technology has turned the legacy of the worst mountain pine beetle infestation in British Columbia’s history into commercially viable lumber, a feat that is keeping the forest industry competitive despite its reliance on twisted, cracked and dead pine trees.

“Technology is what has allowed us to survive. This is what has given B.C. mills the advantage,” said mill manager D’Arcy Henderson, describing how the Quesnel mill, the world’s largest in terms of annual lumber volume, has managed to stay not only in business but profitable despite a diet of logs that a decade ago would have been left in the bush to rot.

Henderson is standing inside the mill’s computer control room, which has more in common with an office in downtown Vancouver than what you might imagine as the inside of a B.C. sawmill. Desks, office chairs and computer monitors fill the workplace. All of them belong to one man, quality control expert Dave Munro. He explained how technology has transformed what was once considered a labour-intensive job.

“There’s zero manual decision-making inside the mill, other than whether to throw a broken piece into the chipper,” said Munro. “We realize our No. 1 cost is logs, so the best thing for us to do is to maximize what we can get out of those logs.”

Computerizing every decision in the mill by the use of scanning technology is how the transformation has been accomplished.

Except for a slight vibration in the floor, Munro’s workspace is quiet and peaceful, insulated from the rumbling noise outside. Through a thick glass window, he can view logs whipping through an array of scanners at 700 feet per minute, with information on everything from their shape to the probable amount of damage caused by pine beetles being gathered from thousands of data points.

Each one of them tells a detailed story of our log. A 3D image shows its diameter, length, how straight it is, the defects, how many boards can be cut from it, and the best dimensions to maximize value. Even its ultimate value as cut lumber flashes on one of the screens Munro monitors.

All sawmills have access to the same technology, said Henderson, which he quipped is based on “a whole lot of algorithms and black box material.” But it is the way people like Munro apply that technology that gives West Fraser its competitive edge. There is some secrecy about how it is all accomplished. Visitors are free to see everything and ask questions, but are asked not to photograph some details.

“We try to stay away from where Dave would make actual parameter changes and what portions of the product we are targeting — what values we are targeting as a company, and how we are getting there,” Henderson said of the need to keep parts of the process confidential.

“Our target products and the values we associate to those, we keep to ourselves.”

Impact on industry

Built in 2006 at a cost of $105 million, the Quesnel sawmill is considered the highest-volume sawmill in the world, running three shifts a day and turning out 600 million board feet of lumber a year — enough wood to frame 46,000 homes, or five per cent of all the houses to be built this year in the United States.

With so much at stake, it is not surprising that West Fraser relies on software, technology and highly skilled technicians to keep the mill operating 24 hours a day, five days a week.

Consultant Gerry Van Leeuwen, vice-president at International Wood Markets, said the destruction to the timber resource caused by the pine beetle generated “a huge spurt in technology” in the Interior forest sector, resulting in facilities like the Quesnel sawmill. He said the Interior is now the world leader in applying modern technology to sawmilling.

“They are running boards through at something like 30 to 35 logs a minute, and those scanners are taking pictures of every log, every defect in the log, and then making a decision. The computers go through a couple of options in three seconds to come up with a decision,” Van Leeuwen said. “It’s mind-boggling.”

The scanning technology can tell the computer where the defects are and what they look like. Then software takes over and comes up with the best solution for cutting the log, after examining thousands of possible combinations within three seconds. Then machines are programmed to move the log into the correct position to minimize the effect of cracks and checks.

The mill consumes two million cubic metres of logs a year, which are piled in massive decks 15 metres high on every spare piece of land within West Fraser’s industrial complex at Quesnel.

A cubic metre of wood is about the same volume as a telephone pole, so imagine what two million telephone poles would look like. Then multiply that by three or four to take into account the other four sawmills operating in Quesnel, add the mountains of wood chips and bark produced by two million cubic metres of trees, and you have a better picture of the impact of the forest industry on the economy of a city of 10,000 people.

The industrial heart of the city, a peninsula of land between the Fraser River and its tributary the Quesnel River, is the most concentrated wood products manufacturing site in North America.

West Fraser’s sawmill is one of five sawmills, two pulp mills, a plywood plant, an MDF plant, and several value-added manufacturers.

Although the sawmill is highly computerized, it is still one of Quesnel’s largest employers. It takes 460 people to keep it operating, running around the clock on weekdays. It is shut down on weekends so a crew can perform maintenance, cleanup and sawdust control.

Preparing the logs

When our log arrives at the mill on a logging truck, about three weeks after W.V. Falloon Contracting harvested it, its first stop is the scale house, where the truck and its load of 50 cubic metres of timber is weighed.

The logs are unloaded by machine and then samples are scaled for length, diameter and grade to determine their value. This is where the information is gathered for an accurate appraisal of the stumpage — the amount of revenue owed to the province for harvesting timber on Crown land. The province collects an average of $6.83 per cubic metre for timber when more than 35 per cent is beetle-ravaged pine.

From the scaling yard, the logs go straight to the hot deck for processing that day, or into inventory to be milled when a large enough supply of similar logs have been built up. Once it enters the mill, it is debarked, scanned and, depending on size, fed into one of three machines the size of a locomotive called a canter that tilts and moves like a ride at Playland, orienting the log to get the best value. Blades square the log into what is referred to as a cant. The cant is then fed into a sawbox where it is broken down further by saws into the dimensions detailed by the scanners.

“Once the log has gone through the canter, the solution is written in stone. From there, that board’s sequence of what happens from here to the railcar is determined,” said Henderson. “If we don’t get it right, we are going to lose value all through the process.”

The passage through the mill takes a matter of minutes, but it takes from 10 days to two weeks for the lumber to come out the back end of the planer, wrapped and ready to be loaded onto a railcar. The time is needed, Henderson explained, for drying.

“There’s a drying process, handling within our lumber yard, the kilns have to dry it and then it gets into the planer (where the rough-cut lumber is planed to a smooth finish) and through their system.”

But for all the mill’s high-tech wizardry, at the end of the line, it is old-fashioned manpower that provides the last step in the manufacturing episode of our story of a log.

In the rail yard, after the packaged lumber has been loaded on specifically designed railcars with an elevated beam down the centre, worker Ryan McNaughton, a ranch owner who runs a few head of cattle on his land in his off-hours, grabs a cable dangling from the base of the car’s deck. With the graceful ease of a cowboy swinging a lariat, he loops it to the top, where Morgan Kennedy is standing. She lifts one foot, a hook on the cable lands over her boot, and she catches it, attaching it to the centre beam in one smooth motion. They repeat their performance up and down both sides of the car, then tighten the cables, securing the load.

It is the most hands-on work associated with our log yet as it begins its journey as lumber to a destination south of the border.

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